Long ago a homeschooling mother of eleven or twelve children remarked that the dirty little secret of her life was how often the important gave way to the urgent. It took me a while to parse this comment because, I admit, I didn’t understand the distinction she was making.

Eventually I realized that somewhere deep in the darkness of my lizard brain, my whole life was marked ‘urgent’. I acted on things marked urgent and I didn’t act on things not marked that way. Of course, as time goes on, everything becomes urgent, including those important things you put off because they were due next week not tomorrow. All of a sudden, next week IS tomorrow.

I’ve spent years trying to retrain my inner psyche to act before that ‘urgent’ flag starts flying. I have not always succeeded.

Sewing a new purple vestment, at this point in the month of November, is both urgent and important though I have been working on it in many different ways for a month. Yesterday, the galloons (gold edging braid) were delivered by the USPS, and the moment to fish or cut bait has arrived.

This is me planning the work. I don’t know where that lovely girl wearing black and white is now. She’d be a real help! Penelope, 1910. Gari Melchers, American, 1860 – 1932. National Gallery of Art, Public domain.

This will be me when I reach the end of the stole. The last step is eight feet of hand sewing with an invisible stitch. I am going to look exactly as calm as this lady. The stole will be purple but the artist, Joseph Rodefer DeCamp (American) didn’t want to put that color in his picture. He also didn’t include all the gray hair that might be present… He called his picture The Seamstress and dated it in 1916. National Gallery of Art, Public domain.

November 13 is also the Feast of Frances Xavier Cabrini. Franciscan Media has the scoop. https://www.franciscanmedia.org/saint-of-the-day/